Taking up the gauntlet in the UK: the only real Big Society is the associative society

The uncritical
understanding of what constitutes a ‘community’ and the failure to grasp what
forms of citizen self-government are possible in current conditions is what
betrays the intellectual laziness of the Big Society’s key thinkers.

As a political project espoused by Britain’s coalition government,
the ‘Big Society’ looks moribund. Yet those on the left would do well not to dismiss
without reservation the thinking that has lain behind its construction. Big
Society thinkers such as Jesse Norman and Phillip Blond offer some accurate
diagnoses of the social and economic problems of contemporary Britain, and are
right to put forward far-reaching alternatives for socio-economic governance
that are informed by ideas of localism, voluntarism, and mutualism.

Engagement with Big Society thinking should therefore be
compulsory. But, wedded as it is to some central shibboleths of modern
conservative thought, the Big Society can only take us so far in an
appreciation of the potential of voluntary organisation for social and economic
governance.

It is not good enough to uncritically espouse the value of
the local and self-organising ‘community’ when such communities may include
rich elites living in gated developments, racist neighbourhood associations, and
men-only golf clubs. At the same time, it is neither politically realistic nor
morally defensible to expect people who have long been denied a political voice
and economic resources to run public services on the cheap.

It is this uncritical understanding of what constitutes a
‘community’ and the failure to grasp what forms of citizen self-government are
possible in current conditions that betrays the intellectual laziness of the Big
Society’s key thinkers. And it is this that has allowed the idea to be
appropriated in Cameron’s conservatism as a mask for a decidedly neo-liberal
craving to substitute the market for the state with scant regard for the social
and economic consequences beyond the calculation of immediate political benefit.

‘Association’

Thus while we should recognise its significance for having
brought ideas about localism, voluntarism, and mutualism into the front-line of
political discussion, we need to move beyond Big Society thinking. Key in this
regard is a word that is largely absent from the Big Society lexicon, at least
in any developed sense: ‘association’.

The concept of association brings together the idea of the
voluntary character of civic action with the understanding that such action is
only possible given certain social, economic, and political conditions. The
tradition of associationalism, best represented in recent times in the
work of Paul Hirst,[i] recognises
both individualism and pluralism as ineradicable and mutually reinforcing
features of modernity. The individualism that emerged from the development of
the modern state in tandem with the capitalist market is both dynamic and
corrosive. Over the course of the last two centuries, it has remorselessly
buried a world in which the primary loci of social identification and action
were the family and the parish. In combination with the increasing complexity
of the division of labour and the rapid rate of technical change that
accompanies the rise and development of industrial and post-industrial societies,
this individualism gives rise to a deep pluralism at the level of economic and
social relations. Thus the kind of individualism characteristic of modern
societies is necessarily supported by a plurality of economic and social actors
and institutions.

Statism v. voluntary
combination

The two major responses to the socially dissociative effects
of individualism over the course of the last seven decades both damaged the
role of voluntary associations in British society. Statism did so by
concentrating the administration and delivery of welfare and public services in
large-scale, centralised public bureaucracies. Its effect was to eradicate many
of the intermediary bodes in civil society that stood between the state and the
individual, and that were able to effectively articulate a plurality of social
and economic interests. The neo-liberal orthodoxy that took root under the
Thatcher governments was premised on the belief of the public benefits of promoting
individualism by the removal of planning and regulation, and the privatisation
and marketisation of public services. The upshot has been an ever sharper
decline in levels of citizen participation in public decision-making and
control of public assets, and the transfer of power to large-scale, centralised
private bureaucracies.

In contrast to these two orthodoxies, associationalism
starts from the view that individualism can only be channelled towards the
achievement of common goods when the conditions are provided in which citizens
can voluntarily combine in associations in order to co-ordinate and regulate
the conditions of their social and economic life. Associationalism in this
regard is as much a moral as a political project as it recognises that it is
only through association that citizens can overcome the alienation that
characterises the hyper-individualism of the modern world. We are more likely
to be happy when we pursue our projects in concert with other citizens than
when we are left to our own devices to achieve selfish and largely
materially-oriented ends.

Those little platoons

Big Society thinking is a very pale version of
associationalism thus understood. The Cameronian understanding of pluralism is superficial,
a touchy-feely sense of diversity which says little more than that we should
tolerate a variety of lifestyles and have compassion for unfortunate individual
circumstances. This ‘compassionate’ conservatism sits uneasily with the other
side of Big Society thinking that stresses the moral imperative to mend the ‘Broken
Society’. Here, responsible citizens are pictured as being under constant threat
from the irresponsible – permissive liberals, crapulent teenagers, the
undeserving poor. Even
the more astute supporters of the Big Society fail to register how far
individualism and pluralism are embedded in the modern world as the necessary
conditions for voluntary action. They urge a return to family and local
neighbourhood that is simply not possible in a society where people increasingly
identify with geographically disparate networks of friends and colleagues and
have only fleeting relationships with those who happen to use the same GP
practice, local swimming baths, or bus route.[ii]

Public funding

An
associationalist politics seeks not to retrieve a mythical golden age of local
community, but rather to provide the conditions in which strangers can act
together in respect of the public resources they use in common but over which
they currently have little control. The principles of associationalism, so
conceived, could attract a great deal of public support. However, one central
obstacle that needs to be overcome is widespread opposition to high levels of
public spending among the electorate (though it should be noted that surveys
also routinely find that a majority would support tax increases if this meant
improved public services). The construction of an associative society requires
big public funds. Extensive welfare provision and high quality public services
cannot be provided on the cheap.

The
experience of the last thirty years in the UK shows that the market has failed
as an alternative to the state in the funding of public services. Privatisation
and marketisation have generated unacceptable levels of social inequality, and
have seen the transfer of billions of pounds of public money into profits for
unaccountable private companies that have consistently failed to provide value
for money. Public funding via taxation will thus have to remain the main source
of spending on welfare and public services – the only alternative is their atrophy.

But how
can people be persuaded that overall levels of public expenditure should not
just be maintained but increased? (They would first have to be persuaded of the
bankruptcy of the economic argument for austerity and deficit reduction, but
that is another matter). An associationalist politics can help here because people
are far more likely to support the idea of higher taxes and public spending if
they know that it is not central government, but rather citizens themselves,
who get to determine how that money is spent. At the same time, having a say on
the distribution of public resources is likely to encourage greater numbers of
people to participate in civil associations. The charge often laid against
associationalism is that people are too apathetic to be involved, but apathy is
a function of a lack of opportunities to participate.

An associative society cannot be born overnight, but the
objective must be to make associative government increasingly viable as a
supplement to and eventually substitute for the state and the market by
providing the circumstances in which citizens can govern the conditions of
social and economic life.

School associations

At
the centre of the associative society, then, are internally democratic, self-governing
civil associations backed by public funds. The role of the state, local, and
regional government is to maintain and police a number of democratically agreed
minimum legal standards that associations must subscribe to. But thereafter, associations are free
to spend publicly allocated sources as they see fit.

There
is nothing wrong, from this perspective, with teachers, parents, and pupils
combining in association to govern a school. School funding would come directly
from the local authority, as happens now with Academy Schools, but the
authority would have no control over how the budget is spent (subject to the
minimal standards set for the curriculum, competence in teaching, open and
equal access, non-selection, etc.). The constitution of the school association
must provide for the representation of teachers, parents, and pupils on the
Board of Governors, and administrative staff must be answerable to them. But
thereafter schools would be free to introduce new methods of teaching, new
subjects, form partnerships with local trades to provide placements for older
pupils, etc.

The
problem with Michael Gove’s policy on Academies and Free Schools is not that it
provides for the devolution of budgets to schools for self-governance, but
rather that it sets schools up as businesses in competition with one another in
a quasi-market. The most successful schools in terms of results and therefore
pupil numbers will tend to be dominated by the children of the middle-classes,
so the marketisation of the system is likely to reinforce rather than tackle
existing class divisions in education by concentrating the best schools in
middle-class areas.[iii]

Policies
like these, which confuse marketisation for administrative decentralisation,
compound the problem of the ‘postcode lottery’ – in other words, the unevenness
of service provision from area to area and the potential to promote social
inequality by diverting resources towards the middle-classes.

But
an associational system avoids this problem in two ways. First, the minimum
standards and expectations that are set out by national, regional, and local
government may include measures such as the guarantee of equal funding for pupils,
the provision of a minimum standard of resources in each school, or even the
targeting of extra resources at poorer pupils and schools. The point here is
that, subject to well-regulated minimum national standards, a radically
decentralised system of public administration will not promote social
inequality.

Secondly,
associative governance must start off as a supplement to, rather than a
replacement for, other forms of governance. It is unrealistic and unfair to
expect that all schools could operate as self-governing associations from the
off. To punish ‘failing’ schools that suffer from the problems of being located
in areas with high levels of social deprivation by effectively transferring
their resources to Academies and Free Schools, is to misunderstand the real
source of such failure. But of course the option remains open to the electorate
to choose a government that recognises the social and economic grounds of
deprivation and is prepared to tackle it through wealth redistribution, job
creation, and the targeting of public funds for local regeneration.

Welfare and public services

If
the associative society is to win backing from citizens, there is a crucial
area in which associationalism must prove its credentials. Can an economy based
on associative principles be robust and sustainable enough to support extensive
welfare provision and excellent public services? The question presupposes,
quite wrongly, that the economy would be weakened by its democratisation and
associationalisation. Yet precisely the opposite is true.

Britain's
deep social pluralism, for example, goes unreflected in the economy,
overly-dependent as we have become on the financial sector. Today, five years
into an unprecedented financial crisis, the damage wrought by that dependency
should be clear for all to see. The coalition has paid lip service to the idea
of economic diversification and the provision of public funding for economic
innovation, but it has little understanding or appetite for the kind of
fundamental changes in economic governance that are required.

Associative finance

To
begin to sketch what such a reformed economy would look like, how would an
associative financial system operate? A possible model is one in which regional
banks, via local branches, would allocate loans to businesses on the basis of
an agreement between the bank and the enterprise about the viability of its
long-term business plan and wider considerations about its contribution to the
local and regional economy.

Such
considerations would be informed by the bank’s policy on regional and local
development, which would be drawn up in consultation with a variety of
interested parties, including regional government, local governments, strategic
planning authorities for transport and other forms of infrastructure, trade
unions, business associations, residents associations, environmental groups, etc.

The
representation of such groups would be formal rather than discretionary, with
associational representation on the bank’s board. In this system, the line
between the status of the bank as either
a private or a public institution is
erased. Funds for investment could come from both private investors, who could
be issued with bonds, and from the state via a national investment bank.

General
standards and social objectives for the release of public funds could be set by
national government – for example, whether to encourage green enterprises or to
discourage the funding of businesses that have connections to unsavoury regimes
– but it would be up to the regional bank in consultation with its
associational representatives to decide precisely how to implement these
policies. That such banks would have overall social and economic objectives and
would be subject to democratic control, would not forestall them from operating
in order to make reasonable profits for their employees and to aid their client
firms in making profits to be shared by their employees.

We
are a very long way from such a form of associative finance in Britain. What is
evident is that if we are to move towards it we need clear and determined
action by government. This would involve, for example, the creation of a publicly
endowed national investment bank that would be democratically governed with the
same kind of associational representation on its board as on that of regional
banks.

Strong
regulation would also be required to protect public assets and ensure they
worked towards public ends rather than private interests. Again, however, after
legislating for measures such as the separation of retail and investment
banking, regulations concerning the distribution of public funds would operate
as minimum standards, and regional banks and local branches would otherwise
have autonomy to determine how such funds are to be dispersed subject to their
general policy.

This
would have the benefit of allowing banks to be responsive to the circumstances
of local areas and individual firms, encouraging a diversification of economic
activity, while at the same time directing public funds to socially useful
forms of production and consumption.

Complex modernity

Associationalism
accepts that the modern world is characterised by complex and plural forms of
social and economic governance. It seeks not to transcend the complexity and
ubiquity of government, but to place its operation in the hands of citizens and
make it work, as far as it can, to satisfy a plurality of needs and wants. It
is a project for the radical democratisation of social and economic governance.

In
contrast, the Big Society ostensibly seeks to retrieve a world of simpler,
smaller government, in which idealised local communities and neighbourhoods
look after their own affairs without the need to consider anyone else. It is a
world that probably never existed and certainly does not exist today. Now and
for the future, the only real Big Society is the associative society.

Jason Edwards is Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck, University of London, where he teaches political theory. His research interests lie in democratic theory and the history of political thought. He is also co-director of Birkbeck's Centre for the Study of British Politics and Public Life and writes on British politics.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.

World Forum for Democracy 2017

This year, the theme is ‘populism’. Is the problem fake news or fake democracy? What media, what political parties, what politicians do we need to re-connect with citizens and make informed choices in 21st century democracy?

Civil Society Futures is a national conversation about how English civil society can flourish in a fast changing world.Come and add your voice»